


Let It Go

by unicornduke



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Death walks beside him, Gen, Slightly Creepy Little Girl Who Follows Clint Around, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-12-10 16:11:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/787955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornduke/pseuds/unicornduke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was always there, a dark, cool presence at his side. Never speaking, never smiling, always watching. Clint just never knew why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let It Go

**Author's Note:**

> This is un-beta so all mistakes are mine. 
> 
> The only warning should be for child abuse, but it is non-explicit and briefly mentioned. 
> 
> If there's anything else you think needs to be warned for, let me know.

She'd always been there.

 

Dark haired little girl that no one else could see.

 

Soft black eyes, but always blank-faced. She never made a sound.

 

Clint played with her, dancing in the trees and playing hide and seek when his mom sent him out of the house. Barney did his own thing, he was twelve and a big kid and he snuck down to the river with the other boys when no one was watching.

 

The little girl never said anything. But she played with him, stacking stones and twigs, building castles in the dirt.

 

She was his friend that no one else could see.

 

~~

 

Then there was that night. When he had an inkling of what she was. That night when he was still hiding under his bed, hid back in the corner where his pa couldn't get him and Barney was calling him a baby, the bruises purpling Clint's face.

 

That night, the little girl disappeared for hours and hours and came walking back in at the heels of two policemen. A wide, wide smile on her face, something like glee in her dark, cold eyes.

 

His parents were dead. Him and Barney were going to an orphanage.

 

And the little girl smiled and smiled.

 

~~

 

No one would talk to him at the orphanage. None of the kids liked him. They gave him weird looks when they thought he couldn't see. Said he gave them shivers.

 

The girl still danced with him. She didn't smile.

 

~~

 

One of the kids was real sick. But the nuns couldn't afford to take him to the hospital. Clint watched as they tried to keep his fever down and kept giving him medicine.

 

It didn't work.

 

The girl started spending time by the boy's bed.

 

She looked happy.

 

Clint shuddered at the expression on her face and slipped off to the kitchen to steal some bread.

 

~~

 

Two days later, the girl smiled wide and bright. So bright.

 

He knew then.

 

~~

 

Death followed him, kept him company in the long days at the circus. She watched over his shoulder as he trained and worked and performed. She danced with him as he flipped and soared and shot as the crowd gasped and cheered.

 

He no longer acknowledged her.

 

Why would Death walk beside him?

 

~~

 

The first time he was the one to kill, Clint heard Death laugh. His arrow flew to his target, _a person,_ and the man went down, bleeding on the floor.

 

And a giggle rang through the room. A quiet, short, stifled giggle that sounded like the kids at the orphanage. The girl, _Death,_ twirled her way across the warehouse to the body and paused by it. She reached down and tapped the man on the forehead, looked up and met Clint's eyes. Her eyes were like the night sky between the stars: nothing. Nothing at all.

 

And then she laughed, wide and free and so happy.

 

~~

 

She stayed with him for so long. Watching as he worked with the Swordsman and Trickshot and was betrayed by them both. Watching as he left and took up a mercenary life, using his bow to earn a living.

 

She liked that. She liked that a lot, always laughing in the background and dancing through the aftermath.

 

But he had to eat.

 

~~

 

Some days he walked through a city and she held his hand, a chill presence at his side.

 

Only one person had ever seen her and the old woman had refused to let Clint into the shop, had sent him away, calling him cursed, marked. Everyone else stepped around her, one or two people in a hurry sometimes through her but Death never seemed to care.

 

~~

 

Then he joined SHIELD and it was good working with them. Sometimes he just gathered intel and spied and planted evidence, and sometimes he was sent to kill someone.

 

The girl still followed him, still laughed when he took a life. She never went far now, plenty of death around him, agents and the people Clint encountered in his work dying in weird horrific ways,

 

On occasion Clint thought Coulson could see her too. Just the odd looks the older man gave him. A glance too long at debrief after Clint watched the girl dig through Coulson's things. A flat look when Clint flinched at her smile.

 

But Coulson never said anything, just let it go.

 

The telepaths on staff never said anything either. Whether they were particular about shielding or they couldn't see her in his thoughts, they never spoke to Psych about it and neither did Clint. It wasn't a hallucination.

 

After all, someone else had seen her.

 

~~

 

One day he got sick of it, of her, laughing in his mind while he shot bad guys. The Black Widow was in his sightlines, tired and worn, looking _nothing_ like that sleek assassin he'd been tracking for days. She stopped to rescue a kidnapped child and it blew her cover but she followed through and now Clint waited on a rooftop for the woman to emerge.

 

And Death sat, swinging her feet off the edge of the building, a wide smile on her face. She knew what was coming, what a kill order was.

 

Arrow nocked and pulled, the tension in the string sang to him, like the laughter of the girl who followed him. The Widow walked out of the home of the kidnapped child, a small curl to her lips despite her exhaustion.

 

Out of the corner of his eye, Clint saw Death lean forward like she was watching a show, watching something _entertaining_.

 

He was _sick_ of it. So sick and tired of the laughing, of the twisted smiles, of the dance of death.

 

So Clint put down his bow, disobeyed orders and the wishes of the little girl, and brought Natasha Romanov in to SHIELD.

 

After hours of interrogation and yelling, Clint went back to his quarters and collapsed onto his bed. Just as he drifted off to sleep, lights on as always, the little girl Death, sat down at the end of his bed.

 

And her eyes shined in the reflected light, black as nothing and shimmering.

 

Watching him.

 

~~

 

Eventually Natasha became Agent Romanov and Fury placed her with Clint, naming them Strike Team Delta, the ones always underestimated.

 

They were the _best_ team SHIELD had and it was glorious.

 

Despite the girl who followed.

 

Death was always there for missions, laughing as they brought down drug lords and weapons dealers and burned organizations to the ground.

 

But sometimes, in the quiet of the safehouses, and downtime quarters, Natasha would curl up next to Clint and the girl would glare at him but then leave them alone. They weren't fucking, it wasn't like that. Clint never asked and Natasha never told but he suspected she was waiting for someone and that person wasn't Clint.

  
He didn't mind. He was just glad she let him hide from the girl sometimes.

 

~~

 

They worked together for years, him and Natasha, with Coulson sometimes joining, and god, they were the best missions. The ones only they could handle. It was exhilarating.

 

Then a solid week of everything that could go wrong, did go wrong; monsters fighting in New York City, Tony Stark going on a bender, hammers falling from the sky. Natasha got Stark and Coulson took Clint to New Mexico where a man broke into a secure compound on a fucking mission.

 

Coulson ordered Clint up high and the girl came with.

 

She smiled at the fight, when Clint nocked and drew, but Clint was so tired of her, so sure that the man on the ground was just a man, lost because he was part of a tragic story, that Clint gave Coulson the code words, that he didn't believe this guy was a threat. _“Better call it because I'm starting to root for this guy.”_

 

That night, the girl stood next to Clint as he lay on his bed, waking from nightmares of storms and dark eyes. And she stared, accusing him of something.

 

Clint didn't know what she wanted _(except he did)_ so he fled to Coulson, to Phil, and he let Clint curl up next to him, shielding Clint from those soulless eyes.

 

~~

 

One week later, the girl watched as Clint was wracked with fever and pain, pressing the speed dial for Medical. Of all the stupid things to happen, appendicitis was the most unlikely.

 

She left him alone more while he was in Medical and he wasn't sure what was more frightening, when she was there, or when she wasn't.

 

~~

 

By the time Clint got out, Natasha was in deep cover in Russia, hunting down reverse-engineered Stark weapons and Coulson was running the Pegasus facility.

 

Then the Tesseract was moved in and Coulson assigned Clint detail on it, running security and watching the scientists.

 

It made him uneasy, the cube, sometime otherworldly and _not right_ about it.

 

Maybe it was how Selvig talked about the cube, _she_ and _her_ and how beautiful it was. Or maybe it was how the blue glow reflected in Death's eyes, gave them color as she sat next to him and watched.

 

Clint wasn't a genius but he read _A Wrinkle in Time_ and listened to enough of the science babble to know the cube was a doorway. So when it started acting up, there was no hesitation in his report to evacuate the facilities, no matter what the scientists said.

 

But he held his post, waiting for something to happen. Something big was coming and the girl knew it too, her face shining, smiling at him as she stood next to the Tesseract.

 

~~

 

“ _You have heart.”_

 

“ _I mean to rule this world, not burrow in it.”_

 

“ _Well, this is unexpected. Little girl, you want to come out and play, yes?”_

 

~~

 

She was laughing.

 

She was laughing and dancing a whirling dance of death and destruction and the helicarrier listed to one side.

 

Clint shot another arrow and she _pounced_ on the man, the electric blue of her eyes lighting up the space around them. She spun, lightning arcing off her body to pierce another man as the arrow hit him in the throat.

 

_This is who I am, Clint Barton, Hawkeye. You can't hold me back any longer and we shall rule over the ashes of these people._ Death whispered in his mind, _shoot that man, kick that woman, kill them, kill them all._

 

She was like the gods of old, wrecking vengeance over a insult, her dress crackling with static electricity the color of Clint's mind, hair blowing in the non-existent wind as she lashed out again and again and again. They danced together, bringing down everyone that stood in their way.

 

And throughout it all, she laughed.

 

~~

 

When Tasha brought Clint back to himself, the girl was nowhere to be seen and Clint thought, for a wonderful second, that she would leave him alone.

 

But as Natasha confessed she was compromised, the girl flickered in behind her, met his eyes for a terrible minute and then disappeared again. He lost track of the conversation, her dark eyes bearing down on him, no longer that _blue_ , and the memories hit him. He fled to the bathroom and threw up nothing but bile.

 

He wanted to collapse under the memories of the time spent under that seductive blue film but Captain America walked in and Clint forced himself forward.

 

The voice in his ear, _Coulson,_ was missing. Clint couldn't think of that, not now, because he would crumple.

 

~~

 

The battle was a blur, the blows he took washing everything over with a gray haze. For some reason, the girl left him alone in his fight, and for that, Clint was grateful.

 

He needed to complete this last mission before he was used up, his skin wasting away until there was nothing left.

 

~~

 

They walked to get shawarma after the battle and Nat filled him in about Phil, what little she knew. _Fury said he was down. But he flung it in their faces,_ she said, flicking her fingers at Stark and Rogers walking in front of them.

 

Clint nodded. That's all he had left in him now, drained empty by everything that happened. He more or less collapsed into the chair next to Natasha while Stark ordered the entire menu. He propped his foot up on Natasha's chair, not only because he was fairly certain his ankle was broken but hopefully the contact would be enough to keep the girl away.

 

Banner, Thor and Rogers fucking scarfed down the food, eating at least enough food for two or three people each in the time it took Natasha to eat hers. Clint wasn't hungry and he picked at the pita bread around the meat, ripping it to tiny bits.

 

Everything hurt, his back, his ribs, his head, his stomach and he knew he needed to be in Medical. The screaming blue memories were filled with motion and plans, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember eating or sleeping in those three days.

 

Then Death appeared by his side, cool and dark eyed once more. Clint curled down slightly, so damn tired of it all. She reached over and picked up his left hand from his lap and wrapped her cold, little hands around it.

 

_It could have been worse, Hawkeye,_ she said, high, clear voice echoing in his head and he shuddered, _you could have_ _ **lost**_ _._

 

Suddenly Thor was there and he laid a hand over the girl's where she held onto Clint's hand. “You haunt this man,” he said, and Clint picked his head up enough to see the sorrow on Thor's face. There were gasps from around the table and Natasha startled out of her chair.

 

_I have been with him for many years,_ she said, watching Thor watch Clint.

 

“Will you not leave him be? He has suffered much and the weight of your eyes is hard to bear for even one such as myself,” Thor said, a nobility covering up the exhaustion in his face. “And he is only a mortal.”

 

_He knows nothing but my eyes_ , Death said, _He has always known it for he is mine and I have chosen him._

 

Thor gently wrapped his hand around the back of Clint's neck, grounding him, warming him. He was no longer really there, floating along in an odd kind of shock and that touch kept him from drifting away.

 

“Let him go, and reward him for carrying your burden for so long.”

 

_Fine,_ she said, taking one of her thin, little hands and cupping Clint's jaw, bringing his eyes up until they met. _I thank you for your service, Hawkeye. And your reward:I will not yet take the soul of Phillip Coulson, Agent of SHIELD. May we meet soon in my hallowed halls._

 

There was a rush of sound, of light and then Clint blacked out.

 

~~

 

A heart monitor beeped in the quiet room. The sound of a page being turned.

 

“You awake Clint?” Nat.

 

He opened his eyes to see her leaning over him. He huffed and stuck his tongue out at her.

 

Thankfully she got the hint and held up a cup of water with a straw, cradling the back of his head while he drank. After he drained half of the cup, Clint leaned back against his pillow. “Thanks.”

 

“Mmm,” Natasha went back to her book, leaving Clint to take stock.

 

He felt...warm. Very warm, warm like laying in the sunlight in the summer, but not uncomfortably so. Everything still hurt but with the slight detachment of good painkillers. Wrapped ribs twinged when he shifted and there was IV lines trailing out of him.

 

But the most significant thing was how....light he felt, how warm. It was easy to breathe now, a weight off his shoulders. Or whatever metaphor he could come up with. And there was no sign of the little girl. If she truly was gone, then, well. Clint would probably celebrate.

 

After a few minutes basking in the feeling of freedom, Clint remembered the heart monitor. He turned his head and in the bed next to his lay Phil, looking awful, gray skinned and frail. But he was alive.

 

“Tash,” Clint said, rolling his head back towards her.

 

She disengaged from her book and tilted her head questioningly.

 

“What did Thor say about,” he paused and drew in a breath, “about the girl?”

 

Natasha tipped her head forward, hiding her face. “He says she's gone and she'll leave you alone.” She met his eyes, hers as hard as diamonds. “You never said she existed.” she said, the barest trace of accusation in her tone.

 

Clint sighed, looking up at the white tiled ceiling. “She was always there. I used to think she was a hallucination, back when I was young. But there was an old woman who saw her too.” He met her eyes again, “The nights where I stayed with you, she left me alone, so thank you.”

 

Natasha reached over and squeezed his hand. “I'm glad I could help.” She shuddered. “It was unpleasant to be around her, even for that little time.”

 

“The others okay?” Clint asked around a yawn.

 

“Yeah, the team is fine.” Natasha smiled, a real one, the curl of her lips, just at the corner, “Stark offered his tower for us to live in when Phil gets out. Think we should join them?”

 

Clint blinked once, slowly. “Sure, I guess.” Blinked again. “I'm gonna sleep, Tash,” he muttered, eyes slipping shut.

 

Everything hurt but at the same time, it was all okay.

 

He had a team, and Nat and Phil, and time to heal and enjoy this freedom. What more could he ask for?

 

~END~


End file.
